I composed Quintessence at the request of the following brass quintets: The Principal Brass of the New York Philharmonic, Axiom Brass, the Chestnut Brass Company, the Dallas Brass Quintet, the Gaudete Brass and the Western Brass Quintet. The piece is a single movement, lasting around seven minutes. The thematic material is energetic and driving, with most of the content derived from augmented ninth chords.

In physics, quintessence is a hypothetical form of dark energy proposed to explain o...